Which meant someone had drained the brake fluid from the Olds.
I checked the other front wheel and it was the same. No brake fluid. I sat there in the car for a few minutes smoking a cigarette before I went into the house to call the local service station and have them tow the Olds in.
It was the third time in less than a month that someone had tried to kill me.
That happens, of course, to private detectives. It isn't only in the movies and the two-bit mystery thrillers that it happens. It happens in real life, too. I know because I've been in the business twenty years. Go downtown some time and look me up; Frank Foley's the name and you'll find me in the Ditmas Building on Pearl Street. Sure it happens to private eyes in real life. They're on a hot case and someone wants them off and because it's known bribes won't do any good, violence, mayhem and murder are tried.
But that didn't fit the situation in this case. There had been three tries on my life. The jets of our gas stove turned on while I was napping over a cup of coffee late of a cold night in the kitchen, with door and windows closed. The pulley of our extension ladder failing to hold while I was up painting the eaves of the house. And now the drained brake fluid.
I was on no important case. All of my work at the moment was routine. They say I am getting old, but don't you believe it. I've got some good cases ahead of me yet. They say I was able to get away with my shady tricks when I was younger but that I'm slipping and can't get away with them now. Don't you believe it. In my business you've always got to get away with them. And when Frank Foley is all washed up, Frank Foley will be the first one to know it.
The situation in this case was worse. The situation in this case was strictly a family affair. All the attempts at my life had been made at home, either by my wife Sue or our boy Sam. Sounds nuts, because we're a pretty happy family usually. But there it was. Either Sue or Sam could have snafu'd the pulley on the extension ladder and either one of them could have turned on the gas jets after I had dozed. As for the drained brake fluid, Sue didn't know a spark plug from the carburetor air intake, but Sam was a hot rod with his own beat-up jalopy and knew as much about cars as anyone since old Henry Ford himself.
I went inside and sat down at the kitchen table. Sam was still lingering over his coffee before heading over to the high school. Sue was doing the dishes and humming. She turned around and said:
"S'matter dear, something wrong with the car?"